Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present: Hiligaynon

Orthography and Basic Phonology

The Hiligaynon writing system currently follows that estab-
lished for the Philippine National Language based upon
tagalog. Previously, a quasi-Hispanic orthography was fol-

Hiligaynon 301

Table 1:

Consonants

Labial

Dental

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

Stops

Voiceless

P

t

k

?

Voiced

b

d

g

Fricatives

Voiceless

f

s

h

Voiced

V

Nasals

m

n

ng

Resonants

w

l,r

y

lowed, which is still in use by an older generation of authors,
e.g., <icao> = ikdw 'you, thou'. The glottal stop is written as a
hyphen before or after another consonant, e.g., ba'ba = <ba-
ba> 'mouth', bug' at = <bug-at> 'heavy'. However, it is never
written in word-initial position before a vowel, whereas in
word-final position it is not indicated in the vast majority of
Hiligaynon publications apart from a convention of writing a
final [u'] or [o'] as <u>. Following the tradition for Tagalog, it
may be indicated with an acute accent over the vowel, e.g.,
bisdya' = <bisaya>, binisayd' = <binisaya>. Punctuation (use
of the period, comma, semicolon, question mark, and excla-
mation mark) is as established for English.

The voiceless stops are all unaspirated. The digraph <ng>
represents the velar nasal [n], which occurs in all positions (at
the beginning, middle and end of words); c, j, f, v, e, and o
occur mostly in borrowings from English and Spanish. R is
trilled, as in Spanish perro.

The glottal stop is a very important sound in distinguishing
words, e.g., [basa'] 'wet' as opposed to [basa] 'read' or [kita']
'see' as opposed to [kita] 'we all [inclusive]'. When a word
ends in a glottal stop and is followed by the linker nga, the two
forms may be fused together, such as: balita" + nga =
<balitang> 'news (of)'. Some linguists, such as Wolfenden
(1971), write the glottal catch with a <q>, e.g., <basaq> 'wet',
but an apostrophe is used herein.

Word accent is very important in distinguishing forms in
Hiligaynon. Roots generally have accent on either the second
last or final syllable, as in: dmo 'master' (Sp.) vs. amo 'the
same, thus\dyaw 'satisfaction' vs,aydw 'don't', bdla 'bullet'
vs. bald 'is it?, really?' bdti 'feel, perceive' vs. batf 'hear,
catch sound of bilin 'remain, stay' vs. bilin 'leftovers', dulot
'offer' vs. dulut 'penetrate', subong 'like, similar' vs. subong
'now, today', and utud 'sibling' vs. utud 'cut'.

If the accent falls on the second last syllable (penult) and
that syllable is not closed by a consonant (i.e., if the syllable is
"open" or of the shape CV), the vowel is pronounced long.
Thus [d:mo, d:yaw, bd:la ... u:tud] in the above examples. If
the accent falls on the final syllable, then that syllable receives
stress (is pronounced louder and with a slight change in pitch),
while the penult is pronounced with a short vowel. Thus [amo,
ay aw, bald ... utud] in the above.

Accent also plays an important role in distinguishing certain
related pairs of words, such as noun or verb roots from their
stative or adjective-like counterparts: ball 'break' vs. ball
'broken', buhi 'live vs. buhi 'alive', kusog 'strength' vs. kusog
'strong', lutu' 'to cook' vs. lutu 'cooked', pilas 'to wound'

vs.pilds 'wound, injury'.

Basic Phonological Rules. All words are formed from syl-
lables of the shape CV(C), that is always an initial consonant
(a word that appears to begin with a vowel, actually begins
with a glottal stop), followed by any vowel, and optionally
ending in a consonant, thus sa [CV] locative marker, sang
[CVC] oblique marker, matd [CV.CV] >eye\takup [CV.CVC]
'cover', tdmbuk [CVC.CVC] 'fat', etc.

Morphophonemic Changes. The phoneme /d/ has a word-
final allophone of [r], so when a root word ending with d re-
ceives a suffix, the -d changes to -r-, as in bay ad 'pay' + -an =
baydran 'be paid' or iddd / eddd 'age' + pang — on =
pangidaron 'be of a certain age'. In inflecting verbs borrowed
from Spanish that end in r, the -r changes to -/z-, as mprepardr
'to prepare' + -un = preparation 'be prepared' or probdr 'to
try out' + -an-probahdn 'be tried out'.

After the distributive prefixes like maN- or paN- NASAL
ASSIMILATION takes place:

b>m

p>m

s>n

t>n

Example

Root

Gloss

himdnwa

bdnwa

' ci vic-mindedness '

ginpamalibdran

balibad

'was denied'

pamdti

batf

'listen to'

pamdhug

pdhog

'threaten, scare off

pamugon

pugon

'work for a daily wage'

panilag

silag

'observe, watch'

panumbungon

sumbong

'accusation'

panindugan

tindog

'stand, position'

Vowel loss is a common process affecting many words that
receive a suffix: ddlhon (from dald) 'be brought', kagamhdnan
(from gahom) 'powers', maddkpan (from dakop) 'can be
caught', pagkalimtan (from limot) '(not) be forgotten',
pamdlhon (frommald) 'let become dry', sundon (fromsunud)
'be followed'.

Table 2: Vowels

Front

Central

Back

High

i

u

Mid

e

Low

a

Zorc, R. David. 2001. Hiligaynon. In: Garry, Jane and
Carl Rubino (eds.) Facts About the World's Languages:
An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages,
Past and Present. New York: H. W Wilson.